Oh, to be able to call our current situation simply one big joke—wouldn’t that be nice! Of course, we’re all taking this very seriously, as we should. We’re all finding our way, day by day, as we adjust to the changing circumstances. We’re developing ways to stay...

Corona Virus or Covid-19 has undoubtedly turned the world in which we live, work, socialize, learn, and play upside down. As I write this in the last week of March, we are starting a 4-week shutdown of our manufacturing facility in New Zealand and a 2-week shutdown period for both Indianapolis...

No doubt that as I am writing this, many of us have had to turn our focus to our families, our friends, and our businesses as the COVID-19 virus has rapidly spread throughout North America. The impact to many has been requirements to shelter families in their homes, except for critical functions...

Every astute business owner has a risk analysis with plans to mitigate those risks. Within the Component Manufacturing industry, elements such as housing downturn, hacking of systems, machine failings, and staff safety concerns would generally make up the topics. I’d put money on the fact...

Alpine’s STITCHER software delivers significant savings for APEX Technology’s bidding and design tasks The Product STITCHER is a unique software tool developed by Alpine to free component estimators and designers from repetitive tasks and to speed both bidding and production...

The rapid rise in cases of Americans infected or possibly infected with the coronavirus made it inevitable that the lumber and building materials industry would be affected eventually. Here are some expert recommendations on how you should respond if one of your employees gets the virus. Note...

Perhaps like many of you, I am writing this message from my home. In light of safety precautions recommended because of the spread of COVID-19, or the Coronavirus, the American Wood Council (AWC) has closed our multi-person offices in Leesburg, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. until such time as...

We’ve all done a fair amount of explaining—after something doesn’t happen as planned, we explain why not. Sometimes, providing the explanation is as simple as that. The when or the how is different than expected, so we set the record straight. But, what about those times when...

Building components is really great! It was a lot of fun in the 1970s when several plants had competitions on who could build the fastest run of trusses (for example, see Joe Kannapell’s article, Vertical Presses—The World Record). Back then, it was really easy to calculate cycle...

One of the many realities of living in the upper Midwest is dealing with the cold and icy conditions of its sometimes perilous winter. So you can imagine as an Australian native, where the temperature rarely drops below 32° (or 0°C for the rest of the world), this was quite the...